Month: December 2016

Details have emerged of plans to transform the site of the former Samuel Johnson Memorial Hospital into a NHS Park & Ride facility. The future of the site has been uncertain since the announcement of the closure of the hospital’s Minor Injuries Unit earlier this month. A spokesman for Burton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust commented:

‘With NHS hospitals in England collecting over £120m last year from hospital car parking charges it makes sense to look closely at this potentially lucrative use for the now defunct Lichfield site.’

A confidential report by the Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent Sustainability and Transformation committee highlighted the potential revenue stream that could be achieved by converting the hospital building into a multi-story car park for premium rate secure parking along side the existing 174 parking spaces.’

Burton Hospitals Trust continued:

‘With the closure of Samuel Johnson and the A&E department at Queen’s Hospital Burton the new parking facility will enable sick and injured Lichfield residents to drive themselves to the Park & Ride and take a regular Arriva bus service to the nearest available A&E department, currently the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle upon Tyne.’

Paul Mycock, head of Lichfield Patients Association, is outraged. He said:

‘I’m outraged. The charges are expected to be £95 per person per day for the secure car park with return ticket to Newcastle. With a journey time of almost four hours many critically ill patients and trauma victims are unlikely to survive the journey despite having pre-paid for their return trip.’

‘We are delighted to confirm that we are a stakeholder in this innovative P&R2A&E scheme. The welfare of paying patients is paramount, each bus will be boarded immediately on arrival by a qualified veterinary nurse who will assess all passengers. Those who appear to be still alive will be admitted for urgent attention to our A&E department.

‘For those unfortunate service users who have not survived the journey our new joint venture partners at Newcastle Co-operative Funeral Service will be on hand to take delivery.’

Low hanging festival fruit
EXCLUSIVE: The Glastonbury festival will be moving to Lichfield from its home at Worthy Farm in 2019, under plans outlined by its founder, Michael Eavis. He said the move to a site about 150 miles north of Glastonbury was likely to take place every five years to save the existing site.

Eavis revealed that he had identified the Lichfield location following news of the success of the Tom Jones spectacular and Cars in the Park in Beacon Park earlier this year. He said:

‘Lichfield has demonstrated that it has the drive and the infrastructure to accommodate a musical festival. I am arranging for one year off, say every fifth year or so, to try and move the show from Worthy Farm to a site that’s more suitable, I have to say Lichfield is that site. It will be Somerset’s loss but a massive gain to Lichfield even if it went there every five years, would it not?’

Eavis on the way to the bank
Eavis, who started hosting the festival at Worthy Farm in 1970, told the BBC:

‘We’ve got a wonderful product, what we do, and we can do it almost anywhere. I love my own farm … I might have to move it to Beacon Park eventually.’

Elusive insolvency avoiding event organiser tinyCows commented :
‘We don’t exist, but if the likes of Tom Jones or the Glastonbury Festival waft by in our direction we have a fuck off tent and we know how to inflate it. We’re up for it, we’re forming a new shell company on Companies House website as we speak.’

A Lichfield man arrested on suspicion of the attempted murder of his wife has claimed that he took desperate measures to get his wife some much needed medical attention.

Local taxidermist Paul Mycock, 45, is accused of deliberately reversing his fully liveried Mitsubishi Pajero over his wife on the driveway of their home on the Boley Park estate. He said:

‘After driving around the streets of Lichfield demanding money with menaces with the nob mob [Round Tablers], I arrived home last night to find my wife in tears clutching her foot. She’d only gone and tripped over one of my stuffed beavers.’

Mr Mycock suggested to his wife, Pauline, 48, that they go to get her checked out at the 24 hour Minor Injuries Unit at the Samuel Johnson Community Hospital.

From her ICU bed in Newcastle Pauline explained:

‘I said to Paul, we’ll be lucky, I’ve heard that our local hospital’s been closed down to prepare it for privatisation. If I’d suffered major trauma then I’d have had to go to our nearest functioning A&E Unit in Newcastle upon Tyne. For minor injuries you’re told to take a couple of paracetamol and visit the pharmacy a week on Monday. No-one’s going to be interested in my broken foot, I said.’

Mycock’s solicitor Jonathan Scroat claims that two weeks on the road with District 250’s Santa coupled with his wife’s excruciating pain left his client’s mind seriously disturbed. He said:
‘There is no doubt that the balance of my client’s mind was seriously disturbed by the failings of the Burton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust when he led his injured wife out onto the driveway of their home and then deliberately reversed his car over her.
‘Fortunately the air ambulance was on the scene within minutes and Mrs Mycock was admitted to Newcastle A&E within the hour.’
Pauline will not be pressing charges, she said:
‘Paul was just trying to get me medical attention and he succeeded. I just hope no one else has to go through this for the sake of a leg X-ray. I blame Brexit.’
‘On the plus side my ankle was only sprained after all,’ she added.

Cllr Mike Wilcox, Leader of Lichfield District Council, has been nominated for the prestigious Lichfield Literature Festival Best Fiction award for his series of Friarsgate development press releases.

Festival director Jennifer Mears commented:
‘Cllr Wilcox has built up an impressive body of work over the years with the publication of his imaginative “Friarsgate Saga” press releases.
‘The series is set in Lichfield but in a parallel universe where a major redevelopment of the city centre actually takes place. The quality of the writing is so high that many members of the public believe that one day soon construction work will actually begin and Lichfield will have a new shopping centre complete with leisure facilities.’
The Wilcox Friargate Saga is supported by fictional social media coverage and a full planning application has even been submitted and granted based on detailed plans, artist’s impressions and scale Lego models of the final offering.
Ms Mears continued:
‘The lavish landscape that Cllr Wilcox has conjured up in words is comparable to Tolkien’s Middle Earth and George RR Martin’s Westeros, detailed and utterly believable but delusional nonetheless.’
Continuing the illusion, local residents have been excited to see some on-site. “engineering” activity. Lichfield amateur cyclist Paul Mycock was fixing a blow-out when the workmen arrived this week, he said:
‘I can’t believe it, work has actually started on our new shopping centre with restaurants, multi-screen cinema and luxury marina. It’s only a matter of time surely before hordes of wildebeest will be seen sweeping majestically down Birmingham Road.
‘Holes are being drilled in the Ford dealership car park and the bus station, actual real holes are being drilled with real drills, up to 16 holes I’m told. This means it’s really real, it really is really happening after all these years of hurt.’

Cllr Wilcox refused to comment on the Best Fiction nomination but did say:
‘To you, to me. U + I are meant to be.’
Lichfield Literature Festival takes place between 1 – 5 March 2017